Miller, Brenda 1959–

PERSONAL: Born 1959. Education: University of Montana, M.F.A.; University of Utah, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—Western Washington University, Humanities 329, 516 High St., Bellingham, WA 98225. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, currently associate professor of English; Bellingham Review, Bellingham, editor-in-chief. Has also worked as a massage therapist.

AWARDS, HONORS: Four Pushcart Prizes; creative writing fellowships from the Abraham Woursell Foundation, Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, and Steffensen-Cannon Foundation.

WRITINGS:

Season of the Body: Essays, Sarabande Books (Louisville, KY), 2002.

(With Suzanne Paola) Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, McGraw-Hill (Boston, MA), 2004.

Work represented in anthologies, including The Beacon Best of 1999: Creative Writing by Women and Men of All Colors, and Storming Heaven's Gate: An Anthology of Spiritual Writings by Women. Contributor to periodicals, including Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Fourth Genre, Yoga Journal, and the Sun.

SIDELIGHTS: English professor Brenda Miller's Season of the Body: Essays is a collection of observations on the physical body in which she reflects on her own life and relationships, Zen meditation, and Jewish heritage. Through her writings, the reader learns the sorrow of her sterility after suffering two ectopic pregnancies, her affection for her godson, and her experiences while caring for sick infants in a hospital. Booklist contributor Donna Seaman wrote that "Miller handles prose as though it were a living body." "In these autobiographical essays, Miller reminds readers of the mind-body connection," declared Pam Kings-bury in Library Journal.

Miller collaborated with Suzanne Paola in writing Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, the main title of which is taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson. It is a volume of advice for those who would draw on their own lives to write and publish memoirs and personal essays. Steve Weinberg noted in the Writer that creative nonfiction that is based on personal experiences finds a smaller audience than does more journalistic writing. However, he added that "if the Miller-Paola regimen helps yield future Annie Dillards and Anne Lamotts, bravo."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 2002, Donna Seaman, review of Season of the Body: Essays, p. 1085.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2002, review of Season of the Body, p. 89

Library Journal, February 1, 2002, Pam Kingsbury, review of Season of the Body, p. 99.

Publishers Weekly, April 1, 2002, review of Season of the Body, p. 72.

Writer, November, 2005, Steve Weinberg, review of Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, p. 46.

ONLINE

Women Writers, http://www.womenwriters.net/ (March 8, 2006), Lisa Johnson, review of Season of the Body.